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AMERICAN FOLK LORE 
PAUL BUNYAN TALES 



Prepared for the Use of Students of the 

University of Wisconsin 
Summer Session 





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CHARLES E. BROWN 

Chief, State Historical Museum 

MADISON, WISCONSIN 
1922 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
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AMQ1 519gg 

pQeUMKNTS DIVISION 



31 



PAUL BUNYAN TALES 



The mythical hero of the lumberjacks is Paul Bunyan and 
tales of his great strength and wonderful exploits are, or 
formerly were, told by the fires of the bunkhouses in the 
logging camps from Maine to Oregon, Washington and Cali- 
fornia. 

"All lumberjacks believe, or pretend to believe that he 
really lived and was the pioneer in the lumber country, some 
of the older men even claim to have known him' or mem- 
bers of his crew." In Wisconsin the location of one of his 
camps is stated to have "been 45 miles west of Rhinelander." 

PAUL BUNYAN 

"Bunyan was a powerful giant, seven feet tall and with a 
stride of seven feet. He was famous throughout the lum- 
bering districts for his great physical strength. So great 
was his lung capacity that he called his men to dinner by 
blowing through a hollow tree. When he spoke limbs some- 
times fell from trees. To keep his pipe filled required the 
entire time of a swamper with a scoop shovel." He could 
not write and ordered the supplies for his camp by drawing 
pictures of what he wanted. Once he ordered grindstones 
and got cheeses. He forgot to draw the holes. He kept 
the time of his men by cutting notches in a piece of wood. 

No undertaking was too great for Paul. Lumberjacks say 
that he is the man who logged the timber off North Dakota. 

He also scooped out the hole for Lake Superior. This he 
used for a reservoir as he was needing water to ice his log- 
ging roads. The Mississippi river was caused by the over- 
turning of a water tank when his ox slipped. 

HIS LOGGING CREW 

His logging crew on the Big Onion river, "the winter of 
the blue snow", in about 1862 or 1865, was so large that the 
men were divided into three gangs. One of these was al- 
ways going to work, a second was at work and a third was 
always returning to camp from work. This kept the cooks 
busy, for when they had finished preparing breakfast for one 
crew they had to prepare dinner for another and supper for 
a third. 

To sharpen their axes the men sometimes rolled boulders 
down steep hillsides and running after them ground the blades 
against the revolving stones. 

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Jim Liverpool was a great jumper. Planting his feet on 
the bank of a river he could jump across it in three jumps. 

Black Dan McDonald, Tom McCann, Dutch Jake, Red Mur- 
phy, Curley Charley, Yellow-head and Patsy Ward were other 
well-known members of his daredevil crew. One of the men 
had two sets of teeth which could saw through anything. 
One night, while walking in his sleep, he encountered a grind- 
stone and before he awoke chewed it up. 

THE CAMP 

The cook shanty was so large that it took half a day to 
walk around its outside. Three forties had to be cleared 
each week to keep up a fire in the big cook-stove. An entire 
cord of wood was needed to start a blaze. The loaves of 
bread were gigantic. When the men had eaten the insides 
the crusts were used for bunks (some say bunk-houses). 

One day, Joe Mufferon, the cook, put a loaf in the oven and 
started around to the other side to remove it, but before he 
got there it had burned to a crisp. Before he began to make 
pancakes he strapped hams on the feet of his two colored 
assistants and had them skate over the top of the stove to 
grease it. 

His eyesight being poor, one day he mixed some blasting 
powder with the batter. It blew up and the colored assistants 
went through the roof and never did come back. That was 
"the winter of the black snow." 

Seven men were kept busy with wheelbarrows hauling 
prune stones away from the camp. The chipmunks ate these 
and grew as big as tigers. 

Paul had much trouble with his cooks. He was always 
having to hire new ones. One got lost between the potato 
bin and the flour bin and nearly starved to death before he 
was found. The horn which Paul or the cook used to call 
the men to dinner was so big that it once blew down ten acres 
of pine. Next time the cook blew it straight up and that 
caused a cyclone. 

The dining room was so large that when a man told a yarn 
at one end it grew so big by the time it reached the other 
that it had to be shoveled out. 

Doughnuts (sinkers) were carried from the kitchen by two 
men on poles which they carried on their shoulders. Some- 
times they were rolled down the length of the tables, the 
men catching them as they went by. Big Ole, the black- 
smith, cut the holes in them with a punch and sledge. 

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THE BLUE OX 

Bunyan was assisted in his lumbering by a huge blue ox, 
Babe, of whom he was very fond. This ox had the strength 
of nine horses and it weighed ten thousand pounds. It meas- 
ured seven axe handles between the eyes. Its horns were of 
immense size. The men tied a line to their tips and hung 
clothing on it to dry. The original color of the animal was 
pure white. One winter it snowed blue snow for seven days 
and the ox lying down in it all winter was dyed blue. 

With the ox Paul dragged a whole house up a hill, then he 
dragged the cellar up after it. When he wanted to peel a 
log he hitched the ox to one end and himself took hold of the 
bark at the other. 

The ox pulled and out came the log "as clean as a whistle." 
Babe sometimes got into mischief. Once he broke loose at 
night and ate up two hundred feet of tow line. Sometimes 
he slipped in behind the crew, drank the water in the river 
and left the drive high and dry. Some of the lakes in Wis- 
consin and Minnesota are in holes made by his feet. 

Bunyan had many other oxen besides Babe. When strung 
out in a line if each took the tail of the other in his mouth 
they would stretch halfway across the state. Their yokes 
piled up made one hundred cords of wood. One day he drove 
his oxen through a hollow log which had fallen across a great 
ravine. When they came through he counted them and saw 
that several were missing. These, he found, had strayed into 
a hollow limb. 

BIG OLE 

Big Ole was Paul's blacksmith at the Big Onion camp. He 
was a very powerful man and when he struck his anvil the 
ring of the metal could be heard in the next county. He 
alone could shoe Babe, the ox, single handed. Once he car- 
ried two of his shoe's for a mile and sunk knee deep in the 
solid rock at every step. Every time the ox was shod a new 
iron mine had to be opened up. 

THE PYRAMID FORTY 

At Round River, in section 37, there was a forty shaped like 
a pyramid, with a heavy growth of timber on all of its sides. 
To see to the top "took a week." It was "as far as twenty 
men could see." Bunyan and his crew labored all one winter, 
"the winter of the blue snow," to 'clear it. From it they cut 
one hundred million feet of timber. Some of the men got one 
short leg from working all winter on one side of the slope. 

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THE ROUND RIVER DRIVE 

The crew rolled the logs cut on the pyramid forty down 
to the bank and in the spring started them down the river. 
They drove for "two weeks or more" hoping to reach a mill 
town where they could dispose of them. It was not until 
they had passed their camp several times that they realized 
that the river was round and had no outlet. Someone recog- 
nized the pyramid. 

FORTY JONES EXPLOIT 

One day Forty Jones, the straw boss, saw some deer tracks 
near the river. He watched for them and at night when they 
came to drink removed the key-log from a pile of logs forty 
feet high, which rolled down hill and killed two hundred of 
the herd. 

The camp then had enough venison to last all winter. 

THE BUCKSKIN HARNESS 

The barn boss made a harness of the hides for the blue ox. 
Later Pink-eye Martin was hauling in logs for firewood. When 
he started with his load it began to rain and the buckskin to 
stretch and when he reached camp Babe was beside him but 
the load was still down in the woods. He tied the ox and 
went in to dinner. 

While he was eating the sun came out very hot, dried the 
harness and hauled the logs to camp. 

BEAN SOUP LAKE 

Near the Round River there was a hot spring. One day 
the tote team bringing up a mammoth load of beans over- 
turned near the spring and the beans fell into it. The team- 
ster expected to be discharged for losing the beans. Joe, the 
cook, took some salt, pepper and pork and threw them in 
among the beans. So the camp had good soup all winter. 
The cook's assistants, however, were angry because each day 
they had to tramp three miles to bring soup to the camp. 

Another version of this tale says that the tote teamster 
was driving across a frozen lake with a load of peas when 
the ice suddenly thawed and the ox was drowned. Bunyan 
dammed the lake, fired the slashings on shore, and then, 
opening the dam, sluiced down the river to his men pea soup 
with an ox-tail flavor. 

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When the men were working at a distance from the camp 
the cook got the soup to them by freezing it onto sticks and 
pieces of rope. 

WILD ANIMALS 

Haunting the woods about the logging camps were numer- 
ous fabulous animals. Some were very wild and fierce and 
others harmless. There was a bird which laid square eggs 
so that they would not roll down hill. The upland trout built 
its nest in tall trees and was very difficult to catch. The 
side-hill dodger had two short legs on the up-hill side. The 
pinnacle grouse had only one wing. This enabled it to fly 
only in one direction about the top of a conical hill. Snow 
snakes were most active in the winter time. They made vic- 
tims of men who wandered in the woods after dark. The 
rumptifusel and the hodag were beasts of great ferocity. 

LITERATURE 

The Round River Drive — E. S. Shepard, The American Lum- 
berman, April 25, 1914. 

Legends of Paul Bunyan, Lumberjack — K. B. Stewart and H. 
A. Watt, Transactions Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, V. 
18, pt. II, 1916. 

Tales About Paul Bunyan — V. I and II, The Red River Lumber 
Co., Chicago. 

The Tall Tale in American Literature — Esther Shepherd, 
Pacific Review, Dec, 1921. 



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